“Civil Resistance” is much more than protests, marches and civil disobedience. Those tactics are among hundreds that can form the repertoire of independent political strategies for the people of any nation to plan, so they can act together to win their rights, obtain justice, stop corruption and other abuses of power, and establish or reform democracy. The failure of many governments to enforce basic rights and make good on the promises of power-holders has, right across the world, impelled people to seek another means by which they may not only demand but also instigate the changes they desire.” Read on...

Michael Randle charts
the course of Howard Clark’s life and career in peace activism and research,
including his time working with Clark on the Alternative Defence Commission
during the 1980s. In his politics and personality, Clark committed himself to
building networks and coalitions.

April Carter
explores Howard Clark’s academic contribution to the study of nonviolent
action. Clark had special expertise on the civil resistance in Kosovo against
Serbian oppression from 1988 to 1998. But his writing and knowledge of many
struggles was internationalist in breadth.

Does the term ‘occupation’ delegitimize
movements by casting participants as short-term guests, instead of
representatives communicating grievances held by a wider society within a
public forum that is theirs?

Some of the biggest corrupt
operations are run by governments themselves, and watchdog bodies often lack
sufficient power to challenge entrenched problems. There’s another powerful
approach: popular action, as documented in Shaazka Beyerle’s new book Curtailing
Corruption.Review.

The
movement could benefit from encouraging splits within the seemingly unified
voice of the elite, bound to have its internal conflicts. Then there
are new challenges and new nonviolent opportunities, planned and unplanned.

When Gayoom
the elder was president, the government sought to facilitate the entrance of
Islamist groups into the Maldives. The resumption of this now may be another
opportunity for proponents of genuine democracy to sharpen the concern of
international observers.

Martin Luther King once said, “sometimes it’s necessary to dramatize
an issue”. Struggles within democracies may actually be harder to organize than
struggles against highly unpopular and corrupt authoritarian regimes. It helps
to get together.

“Three years ago diverse groups of Ukrainian ultras did not have good relations, to put it mildly. Now we have reached a nationwide truce. This was the first time in the Ukrainian fan movement. In many other countries, this has never happened!"

Despite their many efforts
to stave off greater mobilization inspired by the ideals of the New Citizens
Movement, the Party must know that eventually the force of popular mobilization
will be too great to disregard by mere omission.

The time has come – unfortunately in the
midst of another political and human crisis – for the international community
to develop a rapid assistance framework for nonviolent activists and dissidents
who risk their lives to preserve their right to self-rule. Yesterday it was
Ukraine. Today it is Crimea.

Dramatic
words or violent acts were not how the Ukrainian people ousted an authoritarian
leader and his cronies. Civil resistance shredded the legitimacy of a
repressive and corrupt government. The nonviolent movement dissolved the
consent of the people and the loyalty of regime defenders on which Victor Yanukovych depended.

The Egyptian military regime is pushing
conspiracy theories to discredit their democratic, non-violent opponents. Aiming
at several birds with one stone, with respect to their US backers, they are trying
to have it both ways at once. Democracy and non-violence will fight back.

“Mandela was a great leader because he
recognized that the movement had become a civil insurrection, a largely
nonviolent struggle. A great leader is one who recognizes where the movement is
and leads them accordingly, not one who says, ‘Do it my way!’”

When they claim that Otpor was an American
operation to unseat Milosevic, they do not bother to explain why all these
other organizations were fighting Milosevic, some for years before Otpor joined
the fight. Were they all American puppets?

Should Britain, the United States and
others who claim to be concerned, stand by and allow reactionary forces to stage-manage
a phony election, this sends yet another inconsistent and disheartening message
to those struggling for peaceful democratic change in the Islamic world and
beyond.

Although
we now hear guns more than peaceful chants in Syria, and while the news of
armed rebellion overshadows discussion of nonviolent resistance, a subtle
everyday survival activism performed by civic groups, especially women, keeps
the movement alive.

In Mexico, government officials
have often been accused of planting violent protesters in nonviolent movements
in order to justify the use of police force. But teachers know that they are
stakeholders in the country’s future. Like citizens in Brazil, Egypt, Turkey,
Mexican teachers want to play their part.

For the moment, the
Wixáritari believe that they are winning the fight for the hearts and minds of
Mexicans and that public opinion is turning against international mining companies. They should not be underestimated.

The
on-the-ground citizen victory against those who represented one of the most
powerful industries in the world is the result of a multi-pronged, multiyear
combination of tactics that has combined into an innovative, compelling
strategy. See Part One here.

Can we
mobilize and prepare the towns threatened by hydraulic fracturing with action plans so well-devised,
so widely and transparently publicized, that unconventional energy developers
wouldn't dare enter? See Part Two here.

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Newsletter

ICNC circulates a selective digest of world news related to past, present and potential nonviolent conflicts, including active civilian-based struggles against oppressive regimes, nonviolent resistance, political and social dissidence, and the use of nonviolent tactics in a variety of causes. We also include stories that help readers glimpse the larger context of a conflict and that reflect on past historical struggles.

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New Global Ferment

In November 2011 Jack DuVall introduced a special guest week of articles on the theme of Civil Resistance and the New Global Ferment. The articles are below: